My heart quickened, like a hunter’s. I had got them.

I backed the coach twenty yards or so, and parked on the opposite side of the road, so the house was in view. I waited.

I did drop off, now and then. At one point, in the darkness, I moved across to what I thought of as Hilda’s Seat and stretched out. But at 6.30 I sat up, wide-awake. My head was clear. The sky was rosy; it was going to be a beautiful day.

Oddly enough, it was still only Monday morning. So much had happened since Sunday night; during this past week, time had grown and shrunk like elastic. I was two hours from my son. By 8.30 at the latest that yellow door would open and out he’d walk, scrubbed for school. Lesley might take him in the van—my skin tingled when I thought about their domestic arrangements but from the little I remembered this was unlikely. Like my wife, she hated getting up in the morning—I remembered that distant Lesley, on those few distant mornings, grumbling under the sheets while I got ready for work and wondered whether I dared use her razor. Edward was old enough to go to school alone.

I knew exactly what I was going to do. I was going to saunter up, say hello, and announce myself as a long-lost friend of his mother. We would have a chat on the way to the bus stop; we would take the first tentative steps towards friendship. It would be unfair, for me to reveal myself as his father when he thought he had one already. That would come later. I couldn’t think of later, yet.

Birds were singing. I waited, as the minutes crawled by. I slotted in one of Hilda’s cassettes and listened to the theme from A Man and a Woman. I had seen the film, too, and it vaguely worried me that I couldn’t remember who I’d seen it with. Da da da da-da-da-da-da da da da-da-da. Perhaps I’d been alone. But surely no man in his right mind would choose such a soppy picture. I must have been with some girl, close beside me but locked into her own impossible dreams. The actress was Anouk Aimée, gorgeous, but I couldn’t remember what the bloke was called. I couldn’t even remember his face.

At 7.30 a postman appeared at the end of the street. I watched him feeding the doors with letters. Faintly, a dog barked and then was silent.

He crossed the road in front of the coach and glanced up at me. I realized, for the first time, how high-up I must look. The tape had finished and I was sitting in silence, thinking of bacon and eggs. He raised his eyebrows at me and I grinned back. He walked on.